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Ptarmigan

By Ptarmigan
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Ptarmigan Heavyweight Boxer

Ptarmigan

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This was great, my great grandfather directed some movies with Laurel and Hardy. I wonder if he did this one. :lol:

 

:blink: WOW!

 

I just wonder if younger folk today actually 'GET' Laurel & Hardy, or if you have to be of a certain vintage? :huh:

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catty Chatty concertinist

catty

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I don't get it.. :blink: The whole pretext is just...SILLY! The two men didn't even appear distressed that they were "stranded" on that buoy...and I think the concertina playing was fake <_< ... You see a lot of fake stuff on youtube, though.

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Leo Heavyweight Boxer

Leo

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I don't get it.. :blink: The whole pretext is just...SILLY! The two men didn't even appear distressed that they were "stranded" on that buoy...and I think the concertina playing was fake <_< ... You see a lot of fake stuff on youtube, though.

I wouldn't be too sure of that. Stan Laurel was born in England, and rumor has it that he bought one (or more) on a trip back home and played it for real.

 

This list has credited him with playing it in the movie "The Big Noise" from 1944. The whole premis of the movie is that an inventor hid a bomb in the concertina, and the scene is the last one of the movie after they survived the explosion sinking an enemy sub. As only a scene from a movie it's just out of the context of the rest of the movie. It was made a long time before music videos. It's entirely possible it could have been done in the studio after filming the scene.

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036644/soundtrack

 

Here is another scene frome earlier in the movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPxX8SJT2b8&fmt=22

 

It looks like a Scholar concertina to me.

 

It was directed by Malcom St. Clair.

 

Thanks

Leo

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Ptarmigan Heavyweight Boxer

Ptarmigan

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Here is another scene frome earlier in the movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPxX8SJT2b8&fmt=22

 

Leo

 

Hey Leo, thanks for posting that 2nd clip.

 

You can clearly see that he isn't actually playing it in that clip, but who cares, he's doing a pretty good job of miming it.

 

We were asked to play some music recently, for an advert the Irish Tourist Board were filming in & around Bushmills.

Anyway, they had a big cheap Concertina as a prop, which they gave to a young actor, but it actually took him THREE tries before he finally managed to hold it the right way up & the right way round.

He should have taken some tips from Stan's on screen playing technique! ;)

 

Incidentally, the advert won't be shown here, but all you guys 'n gals across the water should watch out for it & please let me know if you see it. ... & no, I'm not the EEJIT trying to play the Concertina, I'm on the Fiddle! ;)

 

Cheers

Dick

 

P.S. Catty, I trust you were just being sarcastic? :o

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m3838 Ineluctable Opinionmaker

m3838

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You can clearly see that he isn't actually playing it in that clip, but who cares, he's doing a pretty good job of miming it.

 

Of course he's not playing it, and not even miming it. He's doing an act with it. And the actual playing was, as always, done with chromatic instrument. How else did he get half step "wrong" notes?

As Laurel and Hardy act, you don't have to have specifically good taste to see the cheapness of the act and redundance of most of of the episodes. I guess, zanity was gone from American cinema, when sound came in.

I saw a movie about piano player, born on the ship, raised by black sailor, who died from the accident. The crew raised the boy and he became self taught piano player. In the end he hid in the old rusty ship that was dinamited, and went down with it.

Very tastefully done, but extremely improbable plot, great acting etc. In one fleeting episode this guy meets poor Irish immigrant with stupendous 30+ button Anglo, who was finishing some musical phrase, when camera zoomed on him. Piano player later had an eye on immigrant's daughter. It was one one of the two movies, where real concertina was actually played in the movie, however briefly.

What's the name of that movie, anybody?

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Ptarmigan Heavyweight Boxer

Ptarmigan

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:lol: :lol: :lol: Ha Ha I can't believe how seriously some folks look at an old clip like this! :blink:

 

I suppose for every million people who saw that movie, there would always have been one who was sitting thinking, hey that guy is not really playing that Concertina, or shoot me that's the sound of an English not an Anglo Concertina! :rolleyes:

 

Just like there'd always be one saying, hey there's a saddle under that old indian blanket on that horse in the old black & white Cowboy movie, or like all the fuss there was back home in Scotland when Braveheart first came out, cause any episode of Star Treck was probably more historically correct than Smell Gibbon's movie!

 

But you know what ... WHO CARES! I, like most folks I suspect, go to the movies to be entertained, simple as that.

 

Braveheart was a brilliant movie, but that's all it was, just a wee bit of entertainment to help us take our minds off our mortgage & all those bills, just for a couple of hours.

 

If I want education I go to a library or night classes or the history channel & if I want musical enlightenment I go to a concert, I certainly don't go to a Laurel & Hardy movie. The guys were very funny slapstick comedians, of their time. I don't expect all the more sophisticated folks of the great C21st to buy into that humour, but I, as someone who grew up in the early days of the first B & W TVs, can look back on those movies with a certain fondness. Call me old fashioned if you like. But if you do, then my reply would be to mimic the lines of one Clark Gable, in Gone with the Wind, when he said: ... "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." ;)

 

Saints preserve us from the nitpickers & begredgers!

 

Cheers

Dick

 

P.S. Of course the plots were improbable, after all, they're usually so much funnier than any probable plot!

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catty Chatty concertinist

catty

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:lol: :lol: :lol: Ha Ha I can't believe how seriously some folks look at an old clip like this! :blink:...hey that guy is not really playing that Concertina...

 

For the record, Dick, I was facetiously complaining of its "fakiness" (I didn't mention the dancing fish.. ;) ) I really do "get" L&H--their brand of dry, deadpaned, absurdity is among my favorites (even if Stan was faking.. :lol: )

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LDT Heavyweight Boxer

LDT

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This was great, my great grandfather directed some movies with Laurel and Hardy. I wonder if he did this one. :lol:

 

:blink: WOW!

 

I just wonder if younger folk today actually 'GET' Laurel & Hardy, or if you have to be of a certain vintage? :huh:

I prefer Harold Lloyd IMO http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=oNciu2l5Opg

I find Laurel & Hardy a bit...annoying.

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